Apple Sauce
by Nook Sundry
Summary: Stuff and nonsense. And drabbles ... Tamers; Impmon/Beelzemon x Jeri Katou
1. Special Delivery

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Digimon. No, seriously.

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**Apple Sauce**

**Apple Sauce:** _Baloney, Nonsense [Slang, Informal; Early 20th century]_

**Summary:** A collection of drabbles, oneshots, etc dedicated solely to Impmon/Beelzemon and Jeri. Because there seriously isn't enough fic for them out there, and that makes me a sad panda. And if you're wondering about the title, it's basically an homage to Derek Stephen Prince's portrayal of the little terror. Every time Impmon opens his mouth it's like Digimon meets Bugsy Malone XD

**[****i. Special Delivery:** A quick oneshot set in the immediate aftermath of the Digimon's return to the real world, post-series; referencing and inspired by the Tamers Drama CD: _Message in a Packet_. Somebody has a quick stop-off to make on his way home ...**]**

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**i. Special Delivery**

It was a blustery evening in late October when a visitor called by the restaurant after hours, claiming to have a package for a Miss Jeri Katou. He was roughly eight and a half feet tall and had interesting taste in headgear.

Her face white above her chequered pyjamas, Jeri had stumbled out the door before her father had a chance to slam it shut and alert the police, or maybe the military. Speechless, he and his wife could only watch as the behemoth handed off a nondescript cardboard box, his demeanour an almost comically polite contrast to his initial bravado.

Complimenting this exchange there was a brief and equally befuddling conversation; something about a delay, computer jargon, some sort of boat ("_Ark?_") ride, and there was somebody who'd worn themselves out apparently - although that could have been a joke, because Jeri peered into the box and laughed, breathlessly. After that the stranger turned to make his exit, but the little girl stopped him just long enough to ask about a letter or a message of some sort, and whether it had gotten wherever it was supposed to go. Red-faced and suddenly tongue tied, the visitor mumbled that it had, and something else that may have been a thank you, but she only smiled.

And then he was off, his great dark wings rattling the wind chimes on the porch, and Jeri went back inside, and there was a ball of snoozing white fuzz in the box, and that night, for once, she slept undisturbed.

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**- fin -  
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**A/N:** _Message in a Packet_, the CD Drama set one year after the series finale, can be found here (just remove the spaces): http : // onkei-kun . livejournal . com / 20268 . html


	2. 5050

**Disclaimer:** Digimon: Not Mine

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**Apple Sauce**

**Apple Sauce:** _Baloney, Nonsense_ _[Slang, Informal; Early 20th Century]_

**[ii. 50/50:** One hundred divided by two divided by two; a series of single-sentence prompt responses completed for LJ's 50foryou challenge. Pre- and Post-Series; there's even one set right after the clash with Locomon if you can spot it**]**

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**ii. 50/50**

**01) Program:** Though the D-Reaper destroyed, it did so only because that was what it had been programmed to do - he, unfortunately, had no such excuse.

**02) Ironic:** 'Sooo,' he drawled, dropping bonelessly into the seat next to her as if they were in the midst of another lazy afternoon in the park and not Ai's wedding reception, 'Your brother and my Tamer, huh?'

**03) Cerulean:** Sometimes Jeri swore she could see flashes of _blue _in his eyes.

**04) Rabble:** Looking down on them from his tree, he couldn't have told the chick with the sock puppet from the goofball with the stupid hat; brainless, gibbering pests, the lot of 'em.

**05) Hold:** 'Oh, I'm fine,' she bleated, prying her fingernails out of his jacket, 'Just … let me know the next time you take off like that.'

**06) Sight:** He'd know her a mile away at this point, green dress or no.

**07) Farm:** She didn't resist when Beelzemon fell back to shepherd her and the twins out of range of the fight, if only because she knew it was her safety he was more concerned about than her being a liability.

**08) Easy:** "_Piece o' cake_," he assured himself, right before she smiled at him and every coherent thought danced out of his head.

**09) Control:** Yes he was brave, he was strong and he was (mostly) true, but sometimes he made it hard not to crack blonde jokes.

**10) Chick:** 'Hey I'm not the one with the feathers,' she reminded him, and couldn't but laugh at the look on his face.

**11) Knot:** He knew there was a name to the funny ball of tension in his stomach that seemed to develop whenever Takato held her hand, and it probably wasn't Indigestion.

**12) Fringe:** 'Beelzemon sure is funny sometimes,' Calumon opined, but Jeri only smiled and tickled him under the chin with the end of a long dark plume.

**13) Storm:** 'What am I, a tarp?' he grumbled, adjusting his wings more securely over her head.

**14) Neutral:** He couldn't change the past, he'd come to terms with that; and if the price of what he'd done was to live knowing he was a monster, he'd pay it ten times over, gladly.

**15) Vision:** Sometimes he still dreamt of frightened children and fallen warriors; those were usually the days when she'd find him sitting outside her window at odd hours.

**16) Poniard:** Jeri could never quite bring herself to tell him that, for all the pain it caused her, he might as well have just bypassed Leomon and run _her _through instead.

**17) Trust:** It was somewhere in between the casual encounters on the way home from cram school and a dozen or so cocky but nonetheless heroic displays that she realized the little terror had actually won her over.

**18) Savage:** Sometimes he wished he could just forget the confrontation outside the Southern Gate, but then he only had to look at the twins, at the Tamers - and one in particular - to know that'd be doing more than just himself a dishonour.

**19) Murder:** "_Absorbed his data_" was a little too vague for Beelzemon's tastes.

**20) Jeer:** She didn't have the heart to tease him after Behemoth got totalled for the third time in less than a year … although it _was _getting kind of funny at this point.

**21) Bunch:** When Calumon explained why he'd seen her laying flowers down by the fountain in the park, he kind of wished he hadn't asked.

**22) Chinchilla:** It wasn't until she started making yipping noises that it dawned on him it was supposed to be a _dog_.

**23) Change:** Two or ten feet tall, he was still a brat.

**24) Hero:** When she called Gallantmon off, she'd saved him in more ways than one, and he wasn't ever about to forget that.

**25) Beehive:** The Wild Bunch sometimes used the term in reference to the D-Reaper's occupation of the city, and he supposed it made sense, but then it made him think of unpleasant things like _nests _and _swarms _… and that wasn't even touching on the _queen _trapped at the heart of the nightmare.

**26) Exclude:** Once, when the Tamers leapt into action, Impmon thought he recognised the expression that flickered across her face and it pained him, least of all because he knew what it was to feel left out.

**27) Bow:** 'Kid, I'm gonna develop a hump here,' he teased, but she wouldn't let go of his helmet straps until she'd extracted his promise to come back in one piece.

**28) Fur:** It only really occurred to her that she'd reached out to fondle his ears comfortingly around about the same time he realized he was leaning into the contact, at which point it got kind of awkward.

**29) Free:** 'Sorry pal,' he gloated, trailing up the stairs behind her, 'What we got here's a Creampuff-Free Zone.'

**30) Miffed:** Impmon did _not _appreciate being referred to as "cute" or "sweet" or "adorable" and she could understand that … but there were time when he made it awfully difficult not to.

**31) Muscle:** For all his obvious strength, he was so painstakingly careful when he opened his arms to the twins that it made her think of Leomon, and though it wasn't without a pang still, Jeri was truly glad to see in them yet another assurance that his passing hadn't been in vain.

**32) Pan:** It was one thing having Calumon poke his nose in when she was trying to make breakfast; a ten-foot-tall hell-for-leather type on wings was definitely incentive to overdo the eggs a little.

**33) Prance:** 'You don't ...' she gasped, adjusting as he eased his grip, 'dance around these things, do you?'

**34) Impatience:** There was brash, there was hasty ... and then there was Beelzemon.

**35) Ace:** Jeri, he learned, possessed an almost frightening talent to read those around her; but whether he was more impressed or intimidated by this Impmon really couldn't tell.

**36) Brick:** As much as telling Terriermon to watch his mouth was probably a glib move, Jeri was pretty sure telling Impmon to do so was about the verbal equivalent of bashing one's head repeatedly against a brick wall.

**37) Add:** On the field she became as much his priority as Ai or Mako as far as he was concerned.

**38) Sneer:** To see him sprawled in the shade with Guilmon and the others, it was hard to recall a time when he turned his nose up at every friendly overture offered him.

**39) Spice:** Things did tend to get that much more interesting once he showed up, there was no arguing that.

**40) Puny:** The plan was relatively simple enough (open wings, fly) but the moment she clambered up into his arms he was so excruciatingly aware of how small she was that he barely knew what to do with himself.

**41) Opposition:** 'Didn't no one ever tell you it's rude to interrupt when people are tryin' to talk?' he hissed, elbowing the little catalyst once Jeri had left the room, and then promptly had to clamp his hands over Calumon's mouth before he got squealed on.

**42) Ribbon:** 'I'm, ah … not too good at this whole birthday thing,' Impmon mumbled gruffly, but the yellow ribbon was already in her hair before he'd finished speaking.

**43) Princess:** Okay a biker and a creampuff weren't exactly your typical knights in shining armour, but heck if they weren't storming that castle anyways.

**44) Gentile:** Impmon had an uncanny knack for doing nice things without drawing attention to the fact, she noticed.

**45) Party:** 'I, heh, realize we might be kinda early,' the Mega hedged, a grinning little girl in one arm and a sheepish looking lop-eared Rookie in the other.

**46) Diligent:** 'Stubborn, you mean,' Renamon deadpanned, and he did his best to ignore the amusement in Jeri's eyes, and the burning in his cheeks.

**47) Inordinate:** If he was ever a little less obnoxious, or a little more careful about what came out of his mouth when she was around, the Tamers were kind enough to keep their thoughts on this phenomenon to themselves.

**48) Concave:** '… Anybody home in there?' Jeri smiled, rapping lightly on his crownspiece.

**49) Pimple:** 'Well, Ai's at a difficult age now,' she commiserated … although if _she _were a fourteen year old Tamer and Impmon had had the audacity poke her in the chin and ask "_Who's your friend?_" Jeri was pretty sure she would have thrown him out of the room as well.

**50) Win:** Walking away from the fight with Gallantmon wasn't what hurt the most; it was more like the realization that, in the end, the only one who'd lost was an innocent little girl.

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**- fin -**

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**A/N:** ... lol What. If I think just the word "shepherd" is enough to meet a "Farm" prompt ... Ugh. I should really know better than to write at three in the morning at this point. XD


	3. Nothings

**Disclaimer:** Beelzemon and his issues are © Bandai.

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**Apple Sauce**

**Apple Sauce:** _Baloney, Nonsense_ _[Slang, Informal; Early 20th Century]_

**[iii. Nothings:** (Post Ep. 36) To the victor goes the _spoils_ ... so to speak.**]**

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**iii. Nothings  
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He remembers it feeling like a curtain pulled, or a veil being lifted. Sudden, startling - _whoosh_ - and the cold coming in; the horrible, slow creep of understanding.

There's a little girl in front of him and she's crying, _she can't stop crying_, and he's done something wrong. Something _horribly_ wrong, something ... something he can't ever take back.

Something unforgivable.

And he knows it, _feels __it_ with every inch of him, with every long and empty mile of the Digital World his feet swallow up in the aftermath. Day turns into night turns into day. Streams of data skirt his path. His head hurts and his bruises ache but it doesn't matter, none of it matters. By rights he shouldn't even _have _a head to hurt, forget the bruises. Gallantmon - Guilmon and Takato - they should've made a shish kebab out of him, _he'd had it coming_, and right now he can't even tell if he's glad that they didn't.

Right now he can't even tell if biting the big one would have been so much worse than _this _…

It's all going around in circles in his head; everything, around and around without ever really getting anywhere. And no matter how many times he relives the whole sorry mess, there's no one thing, no one point to home in on and say for sure that '_That's_ where it all went wrong.' There's no one else he can blame or be angry with but himself. There's no pretending that nothing makes sense, because it does; it all makes horrible sense, and for every "_this wasn't supposed to happen_" or "_but I never meant to-_" there's another awful truth, another picture scrawled across his synapses. Kyuubimon, struggling to pick herself up off the ground. The _rage_ in Growlmon's eyes.

And _her _face, over and over again.

He tries to think of other things, brighter things, but even they begin to knot him up from the inside out. Harmless things like crayons and cartons of juice, like sticky little fingers and tiny-toothed smiles. They _hurt_. He can't think about them without thinking of the little Tamer cowering behind her big brother. He can't think about them without remembering the one he destroyed just for being brave and strong and honourable (_for showing him up like that_). He can't think about them anymore without wondering what it would be like, how it might _feel _… to lose them forever.

He can't think about them without seeing _her face_.

It's too bright here. The wind's picking up. There's a roaring in his ears and a void where his chest should be and he can see them now, all of them. Ai and Mako, Guilmon and Renamon and Terriermon, their partners and their friends, Calumon and the Devas, Leomon and the Tamer that was. A shifting cloud of faces, and he can't see one without seeing another. He can't see Guilmon sharing his bread without seeing Calumon trying to dodge a Bada Boom. He can't see the Tamers playing games in the park without seeing them frantically trying to regroup outside the Southern Gate. He can't see Ai and Mako's faces now without seeing his fist, and the hole in Leomon's stomach, and that kid _begging _Gallantmon to stay his hand.

To _spare _him.

To let him just walk away.

… After everything he'd done.

And he should probably be grateful. Seeing as he killed her partner and all and she was nice enough to blame _herself _more than she blamed the nut job who rammed a fist through his stomach and then absorbed every last trace of him, but with a head so full of echoes and everything else so full of this power that isn't even his there's very little room left for gratitude … much less anything else.

But then what can he do; he's got everything he ever wanted now, right?

Everything he deserves …

_A whole lot of nothing._

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**- fin -**

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**A/N:** Angst is always fun!


	4. Dandelion

**Disclaimer:** Everyone here belongs to Bandai, I'm just borrowing them for a bit.

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**Apple Sauce**

**Apple Sauce:** _Baloney, Nonsense_ _[Slang, Informal; Early 20th Century]_

**[iv. Dandelion:** Some gifts are worth more than they seem.**]**

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**iv. Dandelion**

It was shaping up to be one heck of a shindig, alright.

There were noisemakers and doggiebags, music and streamers, games, gifts, peaches and cream, and more friends and family members than a three-tiered birthday cake could handle. Rika called it "Payback." Everyone else called it a surprise party.

An elaborate conspiracy between the Tamers (who did the running around), their partners (who ran diversions, as needed), and the occasional parent (who ran handy things like restaurants, and bakeries), the whole thing had been in the works for weeks.

And, apparently, it had taken him all of maybe five seconds to ruin everything.

Renamon found him first, of course. She had a knack for finding him in various unflattering emotional states.

'What's the matter?'

Impmon had to think about the question for a minute. It had happened so fast, after all, he still wasn't sure … 'I think I made Jeri cry,' he concluded, finally.

Her tail moved once, and then stilled. The fox stared at him. '… What?'

The smaller critter shook his head. 'I didn't know it was such a big deal.' He looked down at his hands and squeezed them into fists, and then relaxed them when it did nothing to make him feel any better.

There must have been something on his face she didn't like; Renamon turned, searching the smiling faces and moving bodies milling about the Katou's living room, but the birthday girl was nowhere to be seen.

'I couldn't think of anything else,' he mumbled, helplessly. He knew it wasn't much. But he never would have expected that _look_, much less the glassy eyes - and the fumbling, slightly damp peck on the cheek? His fur still stood on end just thinking about it. ' … It was just a _flower_.'

Renamon blinked. 'A flower?' she echoed curiously. Impmon nodded, his throat oddly constricted. She eyed him for a moment, and looked over her shoulder again, just in time to see Jeri re-enter the room modeling her new terrycloth lion knapsack, a cheery yellow flower tucked behind her left ear and a wide, watery smile.

He never could figure out what Foxface found so funny about it, afterwards.

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**- fin -**

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**A/N:** I don't know if Jeri's (or any of the Tamers) birthdates were ever mentioned, but this little interlude is set a short while after _Runaway Locomon_ ... hence Rika's "Payback" comment.


End file.
